COAST’s Participation in UTN
- The Coalition For Sustainable Transportation (COAST) participated in UTN hearings every year since 1996. Attendance at UTN hearings was then largely limited to representatives of social agencies stressing their clients’ needs for access to medical services. Advocacy by social agencies’ personnel was limited by the fact that these agencies were (and continue to be) funded by the same governments that argued that there were no transit needs worth paying for. In the 1990s Unmet Transit Needs were, in SBCAG representatives’ collective mind, synonymous with medical services for indigents.
- In 2001 the Santa Barbara County Action Network (SB CAN) and COAST collected transit-user surveys and encouraged large-scale public participation at UTN hearings, raising the level of public scrutiny at the routine diversion of transit funds. North County representatives’ reaction was: “North County is an agricultural environment; we don’t have transit needs. We don’t need transit.”
- In 2003 Attorney Mark Chytilo, representing COAST and others, sued SBCAG over their denial of inter-community transit service needs. The settlement resulted in the creation of “The Breeze”, a weekday commute service between Lompoc, Vandenberg Air Force, and Santa Maria.
- In 2004 COAST encouraged farm workers to attend SBCAG hearings to convey their transportation needs. Lead by Jesus Estrada, 40 showed up in January and 55 in February. North County representatives’ reaction: “We can see these people have needs but… Are they really transit needs?”
- In 2005 COAST conducted a massive survey of farmworkers documenting origins and destinations. While SBCAG didn’t quite acknowledge the existence of “Unmet Needs”, it nevertheless decided to allocate funds to develop a vanpool program for agricultural workers. This program remains to be implemented.
- Until then, SBCAG had always voted unanimously to find “no Unmet Transit Needs”. In 2005, 1st District Supervisor Salud Carbajal became the first and only SBCAG Director ever to vote against this spiteful practice.
- In 2006 PUEBLO joined the advocacy campaign with strong presence at the Santa Maria hearing.
- Transit Needs Assessments prepared annually by SBCAG are a useful source of statistics regarding transit-dependency, car ownership, poverty levels, and ethnic breakdown in Santa Barbara County, available at www.sbcag.org
- COAST reports of Unmet Transit Needs are available at www.coast-santabarbara.org
In 2006 Marc Chytilo successfully petitioned SBCAG to expand some of the definitions of what constitutes “unmet need” and “reasonable to meet”.